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i just painted the town red....rest with a highlighter pen

I wondered whether to use that colour on a certain town, rather than the whole set of 48, but wasn’t sure if I was being over-literal. It says “...highlighting, in an appropriate colour, three unclued entries.” So does that mean one colour for all three?

Hi Triphazard, the preamble says, "highlighting...three unclued entries (48 cells in total)." So you need to highlight in red all 3 interlinked squares.
Wasn't there a western about a revenant sheriff who returned to the town of his demise, and commanded the citizens who'd orchestrated his murder to paint the town red ?

Thanks to all you helpful people I've managed to correct my earlier mistakes and am in the final furlong and coloured in the relevant squares albeit after considerable sidetracking - the mentions of beautiful rustic Ilford led me to that part of the world, and noticing in column 10 NMOW sent me searching for the Dunmow flitch which wasn't helpful! Can I surmise that 21 is LIGHTING? However, I still don't have answers for 1,9,10 or 18 which is annoying, having come so far. Any help gratefully received.

Yes, 21 is LIGHTNING ( electrical discharge) minus N ( the "essential" or middle letter of potential) making LIGHTING.

As for your other tricky clues, 1, 9 and 10 are all pretty unusual words to be honest, 18 less so.

1 is a reversal of a three letter word meaning disdain followed by K for king.

9 is another three letter reversed word surrounding I (one ). For can, think bathroom...

The definition for 10 is the first three words, then look at the next eight words carefully...

For 18, jazz here indicates an anagram

Good luck!

Very strange Mersault ... After completion 'Clint' came immediateley back to my mind...Not sure I completetely understood the film when I watched it 'back in the day'...and have never thought about it until now...

I made hard work of this one. A fairly easy grid fill and I spotted the perpetrator quite quickly, but then I struggled to connect him with a particular crime or location. Would have been easier to spot the location and work backwards. A whole day of intermittent grid staring before the penny dropped. This link is contains a spoiler but only if you click on it. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-5465,00.html.
All in all a very clever puzzle.

link doesn't work ?

Oh sorry. The automatic linking cut the link at a comma. You need to cut and paste the whole line to include the .html.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-5465,00.html

Thanks Smithsax